Legality of Re-Creating Scripts & Tools

[randfish]

An individual is requesting programmers to create copies of tools like those found at Marketleap.com, Ranks.nl, & seomoz.org.

I don't know if there are legal issues that can prevent him from doing this. Can anyone with knowledge on the subject chime in - I certainly would hate to think that all my hard work designing and paying for construction of the tools can simply be taken and used by anyone...

Here's several URLs with more info:
Page I found: http://www.projectslist.biz/freelance/Perl-CGI/clone-several-php-tools/
Page on ScriptLance (closes in 24 hours): http://www.scriptlance.com/cgi-bin/freelancers/project.cgi?id=1113863255&r=vintcn
User requesting the tools:https://www.scriptlance.com/cgi-bin/freelancers/buyers.cgi?view=johnny872005

I have nothing against this individual, but I'm pretty upset about losing my intellectual property. If it's only for his personal use, perhaps there isn't anything to be done, but I'd hate to see it re-sold.

Thanks for your help!

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

As far as I can se there is a couple of things at stake here. I am not a lawyer but I have had a lot of dealings with such rights from my work.

but I'm pretty upset about losing my intellectual property

First of all you will not loose any of your intellectual property rights, if any, because someone violates them. You may have a case against them but weather or not you win you still have the same rights as before.

Tools, programs and code is protected by different laws in different jurisdictions. Basically, in Europe (so far) it is covered by copyright law and in the US (most often) by Patent law. Two very different things.

I know most about copyright law (from 15 years in music business and publishing + a few in software development).

The good thing about copyright law is that your stuff is yours at creation time - so, as you write the code it's yours, not when you "register" it or pay for an application. It's yours by creation. However, it does require a certain level of originality to obtain copyright on any creation - from music to code. I believe that many of the tools you'll find around does not meet those minimum requirements - probably even including ML's tools. However, that is only from a pure code point of view. There is also the design.

If anyone copy the design that is definately a violation of the designers rights. So it will not be legal to copy the way ML is presenting the results - the design, look & Feel they created. They own that. However, it is allways difficutl to say how much you have to change it for it not to be a copy - in the eyes of the law.

Anyway, it's not a black or white easy question you ask :)
There are many issues at stake and it's probably only the owners of each tool - and copy of it, that can decide if they have a case or not

[mcanerin]

Someone is not allowed to use your copyrighted works, even if they change them. The changes would have to render it unrecognisable as the original before they had any hope of it being considered unique. Translations (ie moving it from PHP to vbscript, etc) would still be covered as derivitives.

However, unlike patents, two people can have the same works copyrighted IF THEY WERE MADE INDEPENDENTLY.

So if the programmers had never seen your code, were locked in a room with no way of seeing your code, and came up with something that looked almost identical to yours, they would have valid copyright on it and you would have no claim.

If they reverse engineered yours, then they would be in violation of your copyright.

My suggestion would be to spend $30 immediately and register your code (assuming it's unique) with the copyright.gov - this will provide prima facie proof that yours is the original work and give you an opportunity to claim statutory damages if it's registered before they accept the job and begin stealing your code.

If you register the code after they violate your copyright, you can still sue but can't claim statutory damages.

Statutory damages under this is US only.

Ian

[randfish]

Mikkel & Ian,

Thanks for your help guys. I really appreciate it. I assume the registration I want is http://www.copyright.gov/register/literary.html

Also, do you have any ideas on how to prevent this guy from doing what he's doing, or at least encouraging him not to do it? If he has it built privately and operates it privately, there's almost no way to find out if he's doing it... There could already be clones out there that I wouldn't know about.

As for originality - I think the tools I'm specifically referring to, those at www.socengine.com/seo/tools.php are very original. I designed them myself, the code is all totally uniquely developed as the developer had never worked on another similiar project. Is there a list of guidelines I can check to see if the tools are indeed "unique".

[Web Diversity]

I suppose as an ironic footnote the makers of tools that interrogate Google data are themselves driving up the CPC of advertisers that appear on the pages that are evaluated .......